[Nutritional screening in heart failure patients: 5 methods review]

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Clinical Nutrition
• Geriatrics

Background:

• Malnutrition is a significant contributor to increased mortality and prolonged hospital stays.
• Nutritional screening is increasingly adopted by healthcare institutions to identify malnutrition early.
• A universally accepted method for nutritional assessment and screening is currently lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine a fast, reliable, and training-free method for nutritional screening and assessment in heart failure patients.
• To compare the effectiveness of various established nutritional assessment tools in this specific patient population.

Main Methods:

• An observational study was conducted on 242 patients with decompensated chronic heart failure.
• Nutritional status was evaluated using Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) as the gold standard, alongside Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) short and long forms, NRS 2002, CONUT, Cardona's method, and MUST.
• Statistical analysis included sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and kappa correlation index.

Main Results:

• The Mini Nutritional Assessment-Long Form (MNA-LF) demonstrated the highest kappa correlation index (0.637) compared to SGA.
• MNA-SF also showed good correlation (0.556), followed by NRS (0.483).
• Other methods like MUST, Cardona, and CONUT showed lower correlation coefficients.

Conclusions:

• The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is a valuable tool for nutritional screening and assessment in heart failure patients.
• MNA offers a reliable and efficient method, performing well against the gold standard Subjective Global Assessment (SGA).
• Its ease of use and effectiveness make it suitable for clinical practice without extensive prior training.